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GAMES Red Faction (Series)
Posted: 10 months ago, last updated 9 weeks ago.
Author: @GeekDadGamer and Jo Robertson.
Overview
Red Faction is a series of shooting and sabotage games. Although the games differ in terms of player perspective, they all share the ability to destroy anything in the environment. The novelty is how believably building collapse. Bring down a wall or ceiling to reveal the metal super structure of a base. Take out the base of a tower to see it topple over. It's a game that makes it fun to blow things up.
The first two games came out close to each other and were followed by Red Faction: Guerrilla and Red Faction: Armageddon seven years later. These latter games perfected the world destruction with demolition charges and your mining hammer and also moved from the first-person shooter view of the first two games into an over-the-shoulder third person perspective. Guerrilla takes place in an open world environment on the planet of Mars allowing players to freely roam across the environment. Armageddon is a more linear experience, largely moving through corridors and caverns from objective to objective.
You play as Alec Mason, a mining engineer who heads to Mars in hope of a better life. On arriving you discover the red planet is run by a dictator regime. In each of the games you are working to undermine and bring down the ruling forces who are inflicting mining camps, death squads and near slave labour on the population -- all enforced by the military who killed your characters brother.
You take on missions to progress through the game's open world sectors and steadily bring down the regime by destroying military bases. Tactics and backstory aside, much of the enjoyment is in the mechanics of smashing buildings into constituent concrete and steel parts. You begin the game with your mining hammer and some guns, but can acquire rockets and even jet packs.
Along the way are lots of intriguing distractions, ranging from getting a car to a safe house to raiding a base and rescuing hostages, or just using explosives to destroy a building in a limited time. These missions reduce the ruling forces control in an area. Once that gets low enough you can take on a mission that advances the story.
The series is still a lot of fun many years later. Red Faction: Guerrilla has been released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. This is a good place to start. If you enjoy that you can move to the others in the series.
The first two games came out close to each other and were followed by Red Faction: Guerrilla and Red Faction: Armageddon seven years later. These latter games perfected the world destruction with demolition charges and your mining hammer and also moved from the first-person shooter view of the first two games into an over-the-shoulder third person perspective. Guerrilla takes place in an open world environment on the planet of Mars allowing players to freely roam across the environment. Armageddon is a more linear experience, largely moving through corridors and caverns from objective to objective.
You play as Alec Mason, a mining engineer who heads to Mars in hope of a better life. On arriving you discover the red planet is run by a dictator regime. In each of the games you are working to undermine and bring down the ruling forces who are inflicting mining camps, death squads and near slave labour on the population -- all enforced by the military who killed your characters brother.
You take on missions to progress through the game's open world sectors and steadily bring down the regime by destroying military bases. Tactics and backstory aside, much of the enjoyment is in the mechanics of smashing buildings into constituent concrete and steel parts. You begin the game with your mining hammer and some guns, but can acquire rockets and even jet packs.
Along the way are lots of intriguing distractions, ranging from getting a car to a safe house to raiding a base and rescuing hostages, or just using explosives to destroy a building in a limited time. These missions reduce the ruling forces control in an area. Once that gets low enough you can take on a mission that advances the story.
The series is still a lot of fun many years later. Red Faction: Guerrilla has been released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. This is a good place to start. If you enjoy that you can move to the others in the series.
- Red Faction (2001) on PlayStation 2, PC, Mac
- Red Faction II (2002) on PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox, PC
- Red Faction: Guerrilla (2009) on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC
- Red Faction: Guerrilla Remastered (2018) on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
- Red Faction: Armageddon (2011) on PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Game Details
Content Rating: PEGI 18
Release Date: 22/05/2001, updated in 2018
Price: 66% off
Platforms: PC, PS3, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox 360 and Xbox One
Genres: Action, Open World, Shooting and Simulation
Accessibility: 2 features
Developer: Red Faction (@RedFaction)
Lists
View our choice of games like Red Faction. This game is good if you want to:
Commitment
Players: This is a single player game.
Costs
Red Faction usually costs £11.99 to £26.99.
Additional in-game purchases are offered for items that enhance the experience. Red Faction Armageddon offered upgrades you could purchase:
Red Faction
Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-Tered
 SALE | Xbox One | £26.99 | £8.99 at the moment | – |
 | Xbox One | £23.99 | – | – |
 | PS4 | £24.99 | – | – |
| SALE | PS4 | £26.99 | £9.99 at the moment | – |
| SALE | Switch | £26.99 | £24.99 at the moment | – |
 | Switch | £26.99 | – | – |
Red Faction II
Red Faction: Armageddon
Additional in-game purchases are offered for items that enhance the experience. Red Faction Armageddon offered upgrades you could purchase:
- Commando Pack - two new weapons.
- Path to War - four new missions and two new weapons.
- Recon Pack - two new weapons.
- Ruin Pack - creative mode.
Age Ratings
Content Rating
Red Faction Guerrilla is rated PEGI 16 due to moderate violence. Violence in the game is exclusively towards human characters. Characters react realistically to bullets, however when grenades and explosives are used, bodies remain intact.Red Faction Armageddon is rated PEGI 18 for scenes of realistic violence and sustained death to both human and alien characters. Some scenes early on in the game where your characters is able to dismember enemy humans dressed in cultist armour with his large hammer called 'Maul'. When struck with force the humans explode into large meaty chunks. Also contains milder expletives; "*!@?*", "damn", "*!@?*".
Accessibility
This was one of the first open-world games to include a visually clear in-world navigation system, instead of needing to rely on the mini-map. Glowy arrows on the road guided you to the current waypoint. The Remastered version also includes this.
Our Red Faction Accessibility Report documents 2 accessibility features:
Our Red Faction Accessibility Report documents 2 accessibility features:
Games Like Red Faction
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